I don’t know how it’s been at your house recently, but at my house it’s been hot. We don’t have central air. We have centrally placed ceiling fans. We don’t have a swamp cooler. We have swampy air from all the sweating we’ve been doing. We don’t even have a window air conditioner. We have a window fan – oh, wait we don’t have a window fan because we can’t get one to work with our crank-out windows. It’s hard to sleep in swampy air listening to the rhythmic squeak of a ceiling fan and each morning I’ve been waking up a little more tired than the morning before. But last night the air cooled off and by morning I had even pulled up a light blanket.
No matter what the morning temperature, Shadow gets up and begins pacing at 5:55 a.m. every morning so Dean, of course, was up at 5:58 a.m. I, however, snuggled down further in my blanket, sighed in happy contentment that I was going to be able to sleep in and wake up when I wanted to, not because the sweat dripping in my eyes woke me up.
So there I was, snoring peacefully, with a blanket covering me!, Sophie curled up next to me, when I heard, “Cath! Come out here! Cath! Come and see this!” It was almost as jarring as when the phone rings in the middle of the night. I sat up, untangled myself from the blanket with shakey hands and jumped out of bed thinking, “What?! What happened? Did a tomato turn red? Did the ice maker start working? Why are you waking me up on the first morning I could actually sleep in without sweating? Didn’t you see I had a blanket pulled up?! It’s perfect sleeping weather. Why, why, why do I have to get up?”
Dean hands me my robe and he’s gone. “Here. Here. Come here. To the deck. You have to see this. Hurry up!” I’m running, thinking, “where’s Maisie, where’s Maisie? She wasn’t curled up next to me, only Sophie. Did she sneak out the door? Is she in a tree?” But it wasn’t an escaped kitty or ripened fruit or even that wild-eyed rabbit munching in the garden. It was a perfect, calm, cool morning in Wyoming with an addition to an already beautiful view from the deck.
Dean can only hope that later today when I’m again hot and sweaty and tired because I had to get up before I wanted to on a Saturday morning; a Saturday morning cool enough that I could have slept in for hours and hours, I’ll remember this morning and the sound of the burners, and the cool air on my sleep-deprived body and it will act as a calming drug. He can hope.
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2 comments:
Beautiful. I miss hot-air balloons. I think even I would get up at 6 a.m. to see them. Maybe.
Hot air balloons are a treat to see, particularly when you're not expecting them. Unfortunately, here in Denver, most of my exposure to hot air balloons has been in the office before I retired. Some were funny looking like the yellow and blue one with the spiky hair. I'm sure you don't have any like that at BLM, especially just over the cubicle wall?
In Colorado Springs we used to see them often on Saturday mornings, sometimes being awaken by the hissing and roaring of the burners on a balloon fifty feet up over the back yard.
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